A structuralist self-portrait which documents Mangolte in the act of taking still photographs from the perspective of her camera’s viewfinder. An absorbing and conceptually dazzling rumination on the concept of “point of view,” as well as the complex relationships between photographer and subject, between the still and moving image.Read More »
Experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton shoots a series of portrait shots of each of his fourteen friends, each with half of their face in shadow and each with a different expression. After all fourteen introductions have been made, Frampton then presents a series of brief shots in which each friend shown previously performs an everyday activity for the camera, from smoking to drinking to sitting. The different angles and the varied lighting in each of these lightning-quick shots are used to create a mysterious and sinister atmosphere.Read More »
NY Times website:
“Regarding Susan Sontag,” a documentary Monday night on HBO, will fill you in on a lot of the details of its subject’s life: her precocity, her travels, her illnesses, her lovers. (Particularly her lovers.)
What it won’t give you is any strong sense of her work. The famous essays and collections of criticism and analysis — “Notes on Camp,” “Against Interpretation,” “On Photography,” “Illness as Metaphor” — are used as mile markers, along with the less famous novels and films. But rather than tackle Ms. Sontag’s ideas or their value head-on, the director, Nancy Kates, continually deflects the discussion along other lines: Ms. Sontag as closeted bisexual, serial heartbreaker, liberal provocateur, narcissist, celebrity, camera subject, Jew, cancer survivor.Read More »